I was rushing to work

when I saw him at Piccadilly station.

He moved from person to person,
asking for money,
carrying a problem
the morning crowd
seemed determined to walk past.

I had somewhere to be.
So did everyone else.

But I stopped.

I asked what had happened.

He told me he had come to Manchester
for a job interview
and lost his bank card and phone
along the way.

Now he was stranded.
He needed fifteen pounds
for a train to Leeds.

Fifteen pounds.

The same small sum
that can become a wall
when you stand on the wrong side of it.

I gave him twenty:
enough for the ticket,
with something left
to buy food.

He thanked me.
He said he had approached
so many people,
but I was the only one
who had stopped to listen.

He did not know
his story had touched
a memory in me.

I, too, had once been
in a difficult place
where a stranger’s kindness
helped me move forward.

Someone who did not know my name
had made room for my need.

Now I was standing
where that stranger had stood.

Perhaps this is how kindness travels:
one person receives it,
another remembers it,
a third benefits from the memory.

The gift changes hands.
Its meaning keeps moving.

I thought about how quickly
we judge people
whose lives have stopped
at a difficult intersection.

We see someone asking for help
and begin writing a story
about their character.

We rarely ask
what happened before
they arrived in front of us.

We see the stranded traveler,
not the interview
he had travelled to attend.

We see the request for money,
not the lost phone,
the missing bank card,
the journey interrupted
by a problem he never planned for.

Empathy asks us
to look beyond the moment
and imagine the life around it.

What if this were me?
What if I had travelled
to pursue an opportunity
and found myself unable to return?
What if my next step depended
on the kindness of someone
whose name I might never know?

That morning, I gave a man twenty pounds.

I did not solve his entire life.
I did not know what awaited him
when he reached Leeds.

But I could help him take the train.

Sometimes compassion is not
the power to change everything.

It is the willingness
to change what you can
when another person needs it.

Someone once stopped for me.
That morning, I stopped for him.

And for a moment,
a train station became more
than a place where people
hurried towards their destinations.

It became a reminder:
we are all traveler’s,
and none of us knows
when the next difficult journey
will require a stranger
to see us as human.

Oluyele Oyetunde Williams (MSc) is a results-driven Project Management Professional, digital transformation specialist, and international spoken word artist. Merging over five years of corporate experience leading technical migrations and compliance initiatives with the soul of a storyteller, Oluyele thrives where strategy meets creativity.

He has performed his poetry on diverse platforms across Nigeria and the UK, including Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield. He is the author of the poetry collection What Life Left in My Hand. When he isn't orchestrating complex digital frameworks, he is exploring human experiences through the power of words, proving that innovation truly sparks at the intersection of structured discipline and imaginative agility.